Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix
The glossy, bright IKEA catalog appearance of this book was completely deceiving. I figured this would be a fun, light-hearted poke at the place IKEA holds in our culture while using a generic horror story as the mechanism.
And that is not at all what this story was. I read this book over three nights, and my sleep each of those nights was disturbed by really creepy dreams (not necessarily nightmares...the creepy dreams were somehow more disconcerting). Besides being a commentary on consumerism and the plight of retail workers... this was also equal parts traditional horror story for the sake of horro. The terror of this story wasn't at all diluted by the underlying message.
And now I'll never be able to step my ass into an IKEA ever again. Bye bye delicious meatballs.
Synopsis:
Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking. To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.